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Optics & Laser Technology 42 (2010) 586593

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Optics & Laser Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optlastec

Measurement performance of an optical CCD-based pyrometer system

Tairan Fu a,n, Zangjian Yang b, Luping Wang b, Xiaofang Cheng b, Maohua Zhong c, Congling Shi c
a b c

Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China Department of Thermal Science and Energy Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China China Academy of Safety Science and Technology, Beijing 100029, PR China

a r t i c l e in f o
Article history: Received 13 June 2009 Received in revised form 20 August 2009 Accepted 27 October 2009 Available online 20 November 2009 Keywords: Pyrometer Optical diagnostics Temperature

a b s t r a c t
The measurement performance of a CCD-based pyrometer system using a three-color method was evaluated for scientic and engineering metrology. The relationships between the system parameters (exposure time and sensor gain) and the intensity measurements in an integrating sphere experiment were determined for a specic CCD sensor. The pyrometer system uses the three-color method based on the intensity ratio without geometry calibrations. The eld measurement characteristics and the effectiveness of coupling the three-color channels were investigated in terms of the temperature measurement uniformity, temperature sensitivity and temperature range of the pyrometer system in standard blackbody tests. The results showed that the temperature non-uniformity is not proportional to the intensity non-uniformity and is in the range of 0.132.14%. The relative temperature sensitivities of intensity ratios for different channel combinations are different, which may provide a way to improve the measurement results. The temperature range bandwidth for object with a non-uniform temperature distribution varies from 190 to 270 K for this specic CCD-based pyrometer. The performance evaluation conclusions for the system with this specic CCD sensor are general and applicable for pyrometer systems using other CCD sensors. & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Optical radiation pyrometry, the determination of the temperature of an object based on its luminosity caused by thermal self-radiation, is an effective and practical method for measuring combustion temperatures or surface temperatures. In recent years, optical pyrometers have been built with a charge coupled device (CCD) for temperature distribution measurements through optical visualization [18]. A CCD is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that stores and displays the data for an image in such a way that each pixel in the image is converted into an electrical charge. CCDs are used in the astronomical telescopes, scanners, machine vision system, optical character recognition and meteorology. The availability of CCD sensors conveniently provides temperature eld measurements which overcomes the shortcoming of traditional spot pyrometers only detecting several points. Existing CCD-based pyrometer systems based on the multicolor method use various means to separate the measurement wavelengths/wavebands with single CCD or multiple CCDs. The former is more advantageous due to the simple system design. In a single CCD system, images for different colors may be sequentially formed on the same monochrome sensor array

Corresponding author. E-mail address: trfu@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (T. Fu).

through a beam splitting/ltering assembly with narrow-band interference lters [24] or they can be simultaneously obtained from a color sensor array with a mosaic pixel lter (for example, an R-G-B Bayer lter) [68]. The method using narrow-band interference lters corresponds to multi-color pyrometry with wavelength measurements, while that using an R-G-B Bayer mosaic pixel lter is looked upon as multi-color pyrometry with waveband measurements. If R-G-B waveband measurements are simplied as three effective wavelengths measurements, it will cause great error even though the conversion relationship is calibrated with blackbody experiments. Previous research on CCD-based pyrometer systems has mainly focused on two approaches to calculate the temperatures. One approach is to beforehand calibrate the system to determine the relationship between the radiation intensity and the corresponding sensor output using the same geometric parameters for the system and the measured object [4]. This relationship is only suitable for the measurements at the same geometric condition. Once the condition is changed, the calibration process needs to be undertaken again. The other approach is to utilize the radiation intensity ratio of different wavelengths/wavebands as a relative intensity. The geometric factor,F (Eq. (1)), is eliminated through the ratio processing (Eq. (10)) and it avoids the calibrations for the geometry condition [6,7]. The measurement uncertainties of these two approaches were theoretically evaluated by Fu et al. [9]. The correlation theory and other aspects of CCD-based pyrometry applications have been analyzed in many references [1019].

0030-3992/$ - see front matter & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.optlastec.2009.10.008

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Although optical pyrometers based on color CCDs have been applied in research studies of high-temperature measurement with promising results, there are few commercially available CCD-based multi-color pyrometers for temperature eld measurements in engineering applications. Some technology issues are still worth further studying. The measurement ability of the CCD-based pyrometers using the multi-color method has not received sufcient attention or been scientically analyzed in the literature. In applications of CCD sensor as a scientic temperature metrology device, it is necessary to evaluate the system measurement performance, including the measurement uncertainty [20,21], system parameters, measurement range and measurement sensitivity. The image processing and CCD-sensor characteristics are generally related to the system parameters (exposure time, sensor gain, etc.), but the quantitative relationships between these parameters and the intensity/temperature measurements are not clear. This analysis is based on a threecolor pyrometer system using a color CCD to evaluate the system performance for scientic and engineering metrology as a function of the system parameters, measurement uniformity, measurement sensitivity and measurement range. The coupling characteristics of the three-color channels in the pyrometer system, based on the intensity ratios, cause the analysis of the measurement performance to be much different from analyses of traditional and commercial single/dual-channel pyrometer systems, arising from the intensity ratio analyses of more channels. In addition, performance analyses of eld measurements with CCD-based pyrometers also differ from analyses of other systems measuring only several points. The analysis presented in this paper provides a valuable description of the performance of CCDbased pyrometers using the multi-color method to make such systems more practical for scientic and engineering applications.

The system applies gains and then does an A/D conversion to get the digital output signals. The pixel values of the recorded CCD frame image are the outputs of the array of micro-sensors. The instrument sensor parameters, including the image LUT (lookup-table), aperture, shutter, global gain and R/G/B gain, are the important adjustable quantities in the CCD-based pyrometer system. These parameters control the intensity measurements of the micro-sensors which affect the temperature measurements. The equation relating the spectral irradiation to the pixel output of the frame image is: ! Z Dt le 1 si lUI l dl ni ; i R; G; B Ci Zki FU 2 F ls Where Ci is the pixel digital value with non-dimension in channel i, obtained by A/D conversion. For a 8 bit output, this value range is from 0 to 255. I(l) is the spectral distribution of the irradiance reaching the CCD sensor per unit time at wavelength l, W m 2 sr 1 mm 1; si(l) is the spectral sensitivity for the combinations of lens/image-optics/color-lter/sensor in channel i; F is a geometric factor that is a function of the radiation attenuation, observation distance, observation angle and lens properties; Dt is the exposure time, s; F is f-number of the aperture; ni is the dark noise in channel i and may be estimated by capturing frame images with the lens cap on the pyrometer; (ls,le) are the system wavelength range, nm; Z is the zooming coefcient relative with the global gain; and ki is the zooming coefcient relative to the R/G/B channel gain. In Eq. (1), different channels (i = R, G, B) correspond to different micro-sensors with different spectral response distributions in the CCD-based system. Therefore, the image pixel values (CR, CG, CB) may be looked upon as three channels of system outputs. Rl Dening Ei F=F 2 lse si lIldl: Ci Zki Dt Ei ni ; i R; G; B 2 When Z = 1 and ki = 1, Ci,0 = Dt Ei + ni. This research used a pyrometer system based on the IMC 147FT CCD camera with the ICX285AL chip (progressive scanning, 1,450,000 pixels 1392(H) 1036(V), cell size 6.45 6.45 mm, 12 bit data depth, S/N ratio 4 56 dB, 20 FPS at maximum resolution), for the following analysis. The spectral sensitivity curves si(l) of IMC 147FT CCD camera may be determined by spectrum experiments [7]. Here only a brief description of the measurement

2. Calibration of CCD-based pyrometer system The design of a CCD-based pyrometer system is shown in Fig. 1. The color CCD is the key part of the optical pyrometer system, with its characteristics determining the measurement performance of the optical pyrometer system. The system data processing procedure is shown in Fig. 2. The light rays are focused on the CCD focal plane and then translated into electronic signals.

Hardware construction High-temperature objects

Color Optical lens CCD sensor

Software analysis

Data processing

Temperarture result
Fig. 1. Design of a CCD-based pyrometer system.

Optical lens Aperture parameter Exposure time

Color CCD sensor Global gain R/G/B gain A/D conversion

Input irradiation
Fig. 2. System data processing.

Output data

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1 0.9 Relative spectral sensitivity 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 370 400 430 460 490 520 550 580 610 640 670 700 730 760 790 Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 3. Relative spectral sensitivity curves.

Channel R Channel G Channel B

18 16 Spectral radiation intensity (w/(cm2 Sr nm)) 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 4. Spectral radiation intensity distribution.

Level 8


Level 6 Level 4

optical axis to be perpendicular to the exit plane and the uniform exit radiation lling the entire eld of view. Eliminate the interference from background light sources and keep the environment dark. Maintain steady working conditions by pre-heating the integrating sphere for half an hour.

2.2. LUT setting

Level 2 Level 1

The 12 bit CCD output data was rst converted into 8 bit data based on the LUT. LUT= 0 means that bits 18 were used from the 12 bit data as the output data, LUT= 1 means that bits 29 were used, and so on. Therefore, the output Ci was calibrated based on the LUT setting with the actual calibrated maximum being up to 4095 (LUT=4). The LUT setting enables the pyrometer system to work with different light intensities. 2.3. Exposure time The adjustment of exposure time prevents the image data to be saturated or dark, and also makes the measurements suitable for high dynamic frequency conditions using a shorter exposure time. The electrical shutter, accurately controlled by the software, theoretically determines the exposure time in Eq. (1). However, the exposure linearity of the intensity response described in the Eq. (1) still needs to be veried for actual measurements. Frame images at different exposure times were captured for a global gain and R/G/B gains of 0. Fig. 5 illustrates the relationship between Ci and the exposure time which shows that Ci is proportional to the exposure time when Ci is less than the critical value. The critical value CB (about 2950) of channel B is slightly lower than the critical values (about 3100) of other channels, R and G, which results from the differences of photo-electricity conversion capacity of different channels of CCD sensor. In the very short exposure time range, this linearity relationship is still satised for applications. Therefore, the linear exposure response described in Eq. (1) is correct for reasonable Ci, but Ci can reach a maximum critical value when the response is no longer linear. This nonlinearity arises from the CCD physical characteristics and does not t for actual measurements. Therefore, the LUT setting should be less than 4 to avoid this non-linearity. 2.4. Sensor gain The global gain and R/G/B gains varied from 0 to 511. For gains of 0, Z =1 and ki =1 in Eq. (1). The relationship between these

progress was introduced. The spectral sensitivity curves were measured by presenting the monochromatic light stimuli, obtained with a monochromator and a 250 W bromine tungsten lamp, to the camera at every spaced wavelength (5 nm interval) in the spectrum range 370810 nm. Simultaneously, the monochromatic radiation intensities at different wavelengths were recorded with a Si-photodiode. Then, the relative spectral sensitivity curves of the camera were obtained, shown in Fig. 3. The results show that when l 4 730 nm, the spectral sensitivity is zero. Therefore, (ls, le) are set to (370, 730 nm). 2.1. Experimental conditions To verify the inuences of the system parameters on the radiation intensity measurement, an IS2500-1000 integrating sphere was used as the standard calibration source to provide steady, uniform reference irradiation. The sphere diameter was 2500 mm and the opening diameter was 1000 mm. The sphere contained sixty four 250 W bromine tungsten lamps which were symmetrically distributed in the sphere, classied in 8 levels (leve1 8: 64 lamps open; level 4: 32 lamps open; level 1: 8 lamps open). The lament length of each lamp was 5 mm. The spectrum range of the radiation output was 2502500 nm, shown in Fig. 4. The stability of the source was up to 99.2% with an opening irradiation uniformity of 99.81%. The experimental condition was based on the following:

 Fix the position of the CCD system at a distance of 1.1 m to the

sphere exit plane and adjust the iris aperture. Fix the system

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2500
3500 3000 2500

2250 2000 1750

i=R i=G i=B

i=R i=G i =B

Ci

2000
Ci

1500 1250 1000 750 500 250 0

1500 1000 500 0 0

1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 Exposure Time (s)

50

100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 GainR

1600 1400 1200 1000

Ci

Fig. 7. Pixel values for various R gains for a global gain of 0.

i=R i=G i=B

2500 2250 2000 1750 1500 1250 1000 750 500 250 0 0
i=R i=G i=B

i=R i=G i=B

800 600 400 200 0 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 Exposure Time (s)

Fig. 5. (a) Pixel values for various exposure times, (b) Local magnication of (a).

2500 2250 2000 1750 1500

Ci

Ci

50

100

150

200

250 GainG

300

350

400

450

500

Fig. 8. Pixel values for various G gains for a global gain of 0.

1250 1000 750 500 250 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 GGain
Fig. 6. Pixel values for various global gains with the R/G/B gains set to 0.

The tting results are given by: GcoefR 0:001782; GcoefG 0:001781; GcoefB 0:001778 5 The results show that the inuence of the global gain on the intensity responses of the three channels is almost same, GcoefR E GcoefG E GcoefB. Through adjusting the global gain value, the maximum zooming rates Zmax for three channels are about 8.19 (R channel), 8.18 (G channel) and 8.14 (B channel). It means that for 8 bit output data 0255 of three channels may be respectively broadened to 02088 (R channel), 02086 (G channel) and 02076 (B channel). Frame images for various R/G/B gains values were captured for a global gain of 0(Z = 1). The relationships between Ci and the R/G/ B gains (represented by GainR, GainG, GainB) shown in Figs. 79 can be t by: log Ci coefi Gaini ; Ci;0 i R ; G; B 6

300

350

400

450

500

values and the actual zooming coefcients, Z and ki, is unknown. The gain can be adjusted to broaden the effective dynamic range of the measurement channels. For example, if the signal in channel R is too weak to be analyzed, the data quality can be improved by setting a higher R gain. Frame images were grabbed at various global gains for R/G/B gains of 0 (ki = 1). The relationship between Ci and the global value (represented by GGain) shown in Fig. 6 can be t by: C log i Gcoefi GGain; Ci;0 i R; G; B 3

Where coefi is the tting coefcient for channel i. When Z = 1, the zooming value, ki, is expressed as,

ki 10coefi Gaini
The tting results are: CoefR 0:001791; CoefG 0:001791; CoefB 0:001786

7 8

where Gcoefi is the tting coefcient for the channel i. When ki = 1, the zooming value, Z, can be expressed as:

Z 10

Gcoefi GGain

The results show that the inuences of the R/G/B gains on the intensity responses are also same, CoefR E CoefG E CoefB. The change of the R gain does not affect other two channels of G and B,

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2500 2250 2000 1750 1500 Ci 1250 1000 750 500 250 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 GainB 350 400 450 500 i=R i=G i=B
Non-uniformity distribution, %

3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 0 50 100 150 200 250 GGain
Fig. 10. Non-uniformity distribution.

i=R i=G i=B 300 350 400 450 500

Fig. 9. Pixel values for various B gains for a global gain of 0.

which is same for the G gain and the B gain. Through adjusting the R/G/B gains values, the maximum zooming rates of three channels are about kR,max E kG,max E kB,max E 8.25. It means that for 8 bit output data 0255 may be broadened to 02104.

geometry calibrations. First, normalize the measured signals (CR, CG, CB). as (u, v),
u R le kR U l sR lUel; T UIb l; T dl CR s ; R le CG kG U l sG lUel; T UIb l; T dl s v R le kR U l sR lUel; T UIb l; T dl CR s R le CB kB U l sB lUel; T UIb l; T dl s

10 2.5. Uniformity analysis The uniformity of the frame image data depends upon the uniformity of the standard source and the system itself which experiences random noise in the CCD sensor and inherent differences in the micro-sensors. The integrating sphere is very uniform (99.81%) and stable (99.2%), thus, the non-uniformity of the recorded two-dimensional data can be used to evaluate the non-uniformity of the pyrometer system itself. The non-uniformity can be quantied by:
N ;M X 1 Ci p; q Ci p; q2 Ci p; q N M p;q 1

where Ib (l,T) is the spectral radiance intensity of an ideal blackbody at the same temperature T and e(l,T) is the spectral emissivity. From Eq. (10), we know that the geometric factor F of Eq. (1) is eliminated and it effectively avoids the calibrations for the geometry quantity F in temperature calculations. The pyrometer performance is based on the typical standard blackbody, e(l,T) E 1.0, so the normalized data for a blackbody measurement (mb,vb) is:
ub R le kR l sR lUIb l; T dl CR;b s ; R le CG;b kG l sG lUIb l; T dl s vb R le kR l sR lUIb l; T dl CR;b s R le CB;b kB l sB lUIb l; T dl s

"

#0:5 9

11 When the spectral sensitivities (sR(l), sG(l), sB(l)) are xed, (ub,vb) uniquely depend on the temperature T. Therefore, averaging of the pixel values for a blackbody image gives: ub
N ;M X 1 u p; q; N M p;q 1 b

whereCi p; q

1 N M

N ;M P i; j 1

Ci p; q;

N M is the effective number

of pixels in the frame image and (p, q) are the coordinates of each pixel in the image. Fig. 10 shows the uniformity distribution of the pixel values as a function of GGain which is acceptable for these measurements. The non-uniformities for the R and G channels are less than 1.5%, but the non-uniformity of the B channel is about 2.5%. The difference is mainly due to smaller values for the B channel compared with the other channels. Higher pixel values make the inuence of the random noise insignicant, so the uniformity distribution is improved.

vb

N ;M X 1 v p; q N M p;q 1 b

12

3. Temperature measurement performance of CCD-based pyrometer system 3.1. Measurement method In the CCD-based pyrometer system, the images are recorded simultaneously from the three R-G-B micro-sensors with spectral sensitivities (sR(l), sG(l), sB(l)). These may be analyzed as three waveband measurements. The measurements are combined with emissivity models to calculate the temperatures using threecolor pyrometry method based on the intensity ratios without

Where N M is the effective number of pixels in the frame image. The relationship between ub ; vb and T can be determined through measurements with a blackbody with the results stored in a database. This relationship is not a function of the geometry quantity F. In actual applications, the measured normalized data (umeas, vmeas) are often affected by measurement uncertainties so they deviate from the tting relationship between ub ; vb and T. Thus, the temperature is calculated iteratively by minimizing the following equation in a selected temperature range:     @T 2 @T 2 vmeas: vb ) min 13 umeas: ub @ub @vb 3.2. Temperature uniformity A Mikron M330 blackbody was used as the calibration reference to illustrate the pyrometer performance. The blackbody can produce any temperature between 300 and 1700 1C. The blackbody consists of a closed end tube with a 25 mm diameter aperture with the tube heated by specially manufactured elements which provide excellent uniformity and a heat-up time

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Temperature Non-uniformity, %

of 80 min to reach 1600 1C. A self-tuning digital PID (Proportion Integration Differentiation) controller with an adjustable set point holds the temperature to within 1 1C at 1600 1C, assuring high accuracy calibration ( 7 0.25% of reading 7 1digit for temperatures above 600 1C). The measurements were carried out at temperatures of 1083, 1093, 1113, y 1753, 1773 K. To avoid saturation or excessively small data values for the high-temperature blackbody measurements, the shutter and LUT were adjusted to appropriate values for the blackbody images. The data post-processing used a medium lter to eliminate random noise. This lter is suitable for real-time elimination of random noise in dynamic measurements. The non-uniformity distributions for the blackbody images at various temperatures are shown in Fig. 11. At higher temperatures, the uniformity is not good as the results in Fig. 10 due to the characteristics of the blackbody source itself. Also, the pixel values for channel B are smaller which results in more nonuniformity for channel B at higher temperature ranges. The relationship between ub ; vb and T was experimentally determined by averaging the pixel values of the blackbody images at various temperatures shown in Fig. 12. Note that ub and vb do not change monotonically with the temperature. The intensity non-uniformities for each blackbody image cause the temperature distributions to be non-uniform. The temperature results would be obtained from Eq. (13) with the relative error between this calculated average temperature and the blackbody standard temperature shown in Fig. 13. The range is within( 2.0, 1.5%). The temperature non-uniformity is given as in Eq. (9) by: " #0:5 N ;M X 2 1 1 T p; q T p; q T p; q N M p;q 1

1.5 1.0 Temperature Error, % 0.5 0.0 1083 -0.5 -1.0 -1.5 -2.0 Temperature (K)
Fig. 13. Relative temperature error.

1183

1283

1383

1483

1583

1683

1783

2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 1083

14

1183

1283

1383

1483

1583

1683

1783

Temperature (K)

5.0 4.5 4.0 Non-uniformity, % 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 i=R i=G i=B

Fig. 14. Temperature non-uniformity.

N ;M P p;q 1

Where T p; q

1 N M

T p; q;

N M is the effective number

of pixels in each image, and (p, q) are the coordinates of each pixel in the image. Fig. 12 shows that the temperature non-uniformity is 0.132.14%. Comparison of Fig. 14 with Fig. 11 shows that the temperature non-uniformity is not proportional to the pixel value non-uniformity, but they are similar.

3.3. Temperature sensitivity

83

33

83

33

83

33

83

33

83

33

83

33

83

11

33

12

12

13

13

14

14

15

15

16

16

17

10

11

17

83

Temperature (K)
Fig. 11. Non-uniformity distribution at various temperatures.

6.3 5.8 5.3 4.8 vb 4.3 3.8 3.3 2.8 2.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1753K 1773K

1393K

The relative temperature sensitivities for u and v are expressed as: 8 Du=u DCR =CR DCG =CG > > > RTSu < DT =T DT =T DT =T 15 D v = v D C = C D CB =CB > R R > > : RTSv DT =T DT =T DT =T RTSu and RTSv are dened as the ratios of the relative changes in the radiation intensity Du/u and Dv/v relative to the relative change in the temperature DT/T. Large absolute values of RTSi(i = u, v) mean that the measurement radiation intensity signal ratios are more sensitive to the temperature, so the temperature sensitivity is higher. The results in Fig. 15 are based on the blackbody experiment data. For most of the temperatures, the absolute value of RTSv is larger than the absolute value of RTSu indicating that the signal ratio Dv/v is more sensitive to the temperature which may explain the difference between Fig. 11 and Fig. 14. Thus, the much greater non-uniformity for channel B at higher temperatures is expected because RTSv, which is related to channel B, is greater.

1133K 1093K 1113K 1083K 1.9 ub 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

Fig. 12. ub ; vb at various temperatures.

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12 Relative Temperature Sensitivity 10 8 6 4 2 0 -2 1050 i=u i=v

Temperature bandwidth (K)

280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 200 190 180 1083 1133 1183 1233 1283 1333 1383 1433 1483 1533 Lower temperature limit (K)
Fig. 16. Effective temperature range.

1150

1250

1350 1450 1550 Temperature (K)

1650

1750

Fig. 15. Absolute value of RTSi at different temperatures.

3.4. Temperature range The dynamic range, b, of a sensor is dened as the ratio of the maximum detection signal due to the saturation to the minimum detection signal restricted by the noise. If the signal range exceeds the dynamic range of the sensor, the signal will become saturated or be lost in the noise. Generally, the temperature range is determined by requiring that the ratio of the maximum value to the minimum value of the three channel measured signals must be less than the dynamic range b of the sensors [15]. The temperature range (10831773 K) of the pyrometer investigated here was veried by the blackbody experiments. Since the temperature variations signicantly change the measured values on each channel, not all temperatures in the temperature range can be simultaneously measured in one measurement. The signals range for each channel is restricted by the dynamic range of the sensor. Therefore, the temperature range needs to be partitioned with different LUT, exposure time and gain. The allowable temperatures that can be simultaneously measured are specied by: ( CR THigh =CR TLow r b; CG THigh =CG TLow r b; CB THigh =CB TLow r b; 1=b r CR =CG r b; 1=b r CR =CB r b: 16 If any condition in Eq. (16) cannot be satised, then the signal for one of the channels at that temperature is beyond the dynamic range of the sensor. The temperature range must then be partitioned into N sub-zones TLow ; T1 ; T1 ; T2 TN2 ; TN1 ; TN1 ; THigh , to ensure that the signal variations for the different temperatures are all within the restrictions of Eq. (16). The proportionality relationships between the sub-zone signals can be used to identify transitions among different sub-zones with the instrument parameters adjusted for the different sub-zones. The temperature range satisfying Eq. (16) is dened as the effective temperature range when THigh is the upper temperature limit, TLow is the lower temperature limit, and DT = THigh TLow is the temperature bandwidth. For this CCD-based pyrometer system, the output signal range is 0255 for any LUT setting although it has 12 bit data conversion precision. Tests showed that for values higher than 254, the output signal was prone to distortion caused by saturation while for values lower than 15, the signal was greatly inuenced by noise. Therefore, the effective dynamic range b could be expressed as 254/15= 16.93. The results in Fig. 16 calculated based on Eq. (16) that the temperature bandwidth is about 190270 K with the bandwidth increasing as the lower temperature limit increases for blackbody/gray body measurements. If the

temperature distributions on the measured objects are uniform, the temperature eld processing will not have to be partitioned. However for objects with highly non-uniform temperature distributions that exceed the temperature bandwidths in Fig. 16, the temperature eld must be partitioned. For objects that are not ideal gray bodies, the temperature bandwidths will be slightly different, but the difference is not signicant.

4. Conclusions An optical CCD-based pyrometer system has been developed for high-temperature measurements for many possible applications in optical diagnostics. The measurement performance of the CCD-based system was evaluated in detail. Measurements of the irradiation emitted by an integrating sphere were used to investigate the inuence of the system parameters (exposure time, global gain, R/G/B gain and LUT) on the intensity measurements. Expressions for Dt, Z and ki can be used to control the intensity measurements of the micro-sensor channels to improve the temperature measurements, for example the data quality and temperature range. The intensity measurement uniformity of the pyrometer system measured for an integrating sphere as a blackbody source was found to be acceptable. A modied threecolor method based on the ratios of the signals from the three channels is used to calculate the temperature without any geometry calibration. The temperature uniformity, temperature sensitivity and temperature range were analyzed for blackbody irradiation to show that the temperature non-uniformity is not proportional to the intensity non-uniformity and is in the range of 0.132.14%. The relative temperature sensitivities of RTSu and RTSv differ, which may provide a way to improve the measurement results. For example, due to RTSv 4 RTSu, we need to enhance the measurement precision for the ratio signal u to optimize the results. In addition, combining with Eqs. (1), (10) and (15), improving RTSu and RTSv by varying the design of spectral sensitivity curves si(l) will be also to optimize the results. For temperatures in the range (1083, 1773 K), the temperature range bandwidth for object with a non-uniform temperature distribution varies from 190 to 270 K for this specic CCD-based pyrometer. Although these performance results were obtained for the standard blackbody experiments, the conclusions are general and can be applied to gray body measurements in practice. If the objects are not ideal gray bodies, the results may differ slightly. The objects radiative characteristics can then be combined with the system spectral sensitivity response to improve the results. These results provide valuable information

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on CCD-based pyrometer system performance that will facilitate the use of CCD-based pyrometer systems in practice.

Acknowledgement The paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50606033 & 50704027), National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (2007AA04Z178), and China Research for the 11th Five-year Plan (2008BAB29B06). We thank Prof. D.M. Christopher for editing the English. References
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